TGFI, Volume 564: AI-inspired motorcycle jumps

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Some­thing nifty I learned this week: you can set your DNS to block mal­ware and adult con­tent auto­mat­i­cal­ly and for free. I did­n’t know that. This is cool! I’m sure it’s not per­fect, but I love the con­cept. It won’t real­ly block a deter­mined ado­les­cent, but it can keep sketchy ads from entic­ing them in the first place. More info at Intro­duc­ing 1.1.1.1 for Fam­i­lies | The Cloud­flare Blog

For IPv4
Primary DNS: 1.1.1.3
Secondary DNS: 1.0.0.3

For IPv6
Primary DNS: 2606:4700:4700::1113
Secondary DNS: 2606:4700:4700::1003

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. AI-relat­ed arti­cles
   • How Ter­ror­ist Groups Are Using A.I. to Gain an Edge in Bat­tle (Dustin Volz and Eric Schmitt, New York Times): “When a gang of motor­cy­cle-rid­ing mem­bers of Boko Haram attacked a mil­i­tary base in east­ern Nige­ria a cou­ple of years ago, they were stymied by a defen­sive trench sur­round­ing the com­plex. The extrem­ists regrouped. Before launch­ing anoth­er assault, they asked A.I. for help. ‘We saw in a movie how motor­cy­cles can jump over bridges,’ a for­mer Boko Haram com­man­der told Anto­nia Juelich, a ter­ror­ism and tech­nol­o­gy researcher at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty. ‘We used A.I. to learn how to do this. We gave it infor­ma­tion, like what motor­cy­cles we use and the dis­tance we need to jump and so on, and it gave us steps on what we have to do.’ Using tips from chat­bots, mechan­ics mod­i­fied the motor­cy­cles to allow for faster accel­er­a­tion and top speed. The rid­ers dug their own holes, filled them with bro­ken glass and fire, and prac­ticed jumps — some­times with fatal out­comes — until they achieved enough aer­i­al liftoff to mount a suc­cess­ful attack, defec­tors said.” — Wild. My favorite bit apart from that: “Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for Ope­nAI, said using the company’s plat­forms for vio­lence or ter­ror­ism vio­lat­ed its poli­cies.” Yes, ter­ror­ists are noto­ri­ous rule-fol­low­ers.
   • AI Wins At Slay The Spire (Ethan Mol­lick, Twit­ter): “This was one of those impres­sive AI thresh­olds for me. I gave GPT‑5.6 Sol in Codex con­trol over my com­put­er, and asked it to win the dai­ly chal­lenge for the game Slay the Spire 2 (ran­dom­ized fac­tors, so can’t cheat). It
   • AI Isn’t Human. Stop Talk­ing About It Like It Is. (Spencer Kla­van, The Free Press): “Much of our deep­est civ­i­liza­tion­al wisdom—and, if we’re Amer­i­cans, the essence of our nation­al creed—is found­ed on the premise that human beings are not just fan­cy bio­log­i­cal con­trap­tions but ani­mate beings with a right to the lives we are born with. Tech­no­log­i­cal cre­ations, mar­velous as they are, can’t have the same rights or respon­si­bil­i­ties pre­cise­ly because they don’t have the same capac­i­ty for thought in the truest sense of the word. Treat things like peo­ple, and you run the risk of treat­ing peo­ple like things.”
2. I’m a Col­lege Pro­fes­sor Inflat­ing Grades. I Need Help. (Frank Bruni, New York Times): “Once every­body starts dis­pens­ing A’s like so many Pez, every­body else is pres­sured to do like­wise: If they don’t, they’re giv­ing grades that no longer com­mu­ni­cate — to stu­dents, to prize com­mit­tees, to grad­u­ate schools — what those grades were intend­ed to sig­ni­fy. I may per­son­al­ly con­sid­er an A- a com­pli­ment, but if the cul­ture regards it as a gen­tle remon­stra­tion, am I stub­born­ly choos­ing to speak an extinct lan­guage at my stu­dents’ expense? To what ben­e­fit? No depart­ment head or dean will com­pli­ment me on my high stan­dards. No for­mu­la will inter­pret and adjust my course eval­u­a­tions for how gen­er­ous or stingy I was with A’s. My cours­es will be less appeal­ing. And school admin­is­tra­tors gen­er­al­ly pre­fer pro­fes­sors who attract stu­dents to pro­fes­sors who repel them.”
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3. Two tales of pas­toral impris­on­ment:
   • ‘Sud­den­ly, I Was Free’: A Chi­nese Pastor’s Jour­ney From Jail to the U.S. (Vivian Wang, New York Times): “When Mr. Jin stepped off the air­plane, he saw that his youngest son, who had been 10 years old when they last met, was now taller than him. He had missed the wed­ding of his old­est child, Grace Jin Drex­el, who was now a moth­er of three. She was car­ry­ing her youngest, just one month old, whom she had named Ezra in her father’s hon­or. ‘Hold­ing the chil­dren, that was the hap­pi­est moment of my life,’ he said. Still, the moment was tinged by grief, too. Ms. Jin Drex­el said she almost didn’t rec­og­nize her father at first, because he had lost more than 30 pounds. His hair had also been shaved in jail. On the Fourth of July, the fam­i­ly ate In-N-Out burg­ers and watched fire­works from their hotel room in Los Ange­les.”
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   • A pastor’s lengthy ICE deten­tion leaves his Col­orado parish­ioners torn (Michelle Boorstein, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In Ugan­da, Nal­wam­ba was pas­tor of a 300-mem­ber Angli­can church and an occa­sion­al pub­lic crit­ic of the gov­ern­ment. In an inter­view and in var­i­ous U.S. court records, he described threat­en­ing inci­dents under mul­ti­ple Ugan­dan regimes. Secu­ri­ty agents took him from his home in the mid­dle of the night, forced him to lie on the ground in a field and inter­ro­gat­ed him about his involve­ment with an oppo­si­tion group, accord­ing to a sum­ma­ry of his account includ­ed in a 2010 removal order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Cir­cuit. ‘He was warned that if he ever went to the ‘air­port to try and fly out of the coun­try,’ [he would] nev­er come out alive,’ the order quot­ed him as say­ing. Some friends encour­aged him to take a break from Ugan­da, and in 2002 he came to the U.S. for a con­fer­ence of charis­mat­ic Chris­tians. He nev­er returned. Today he is one of an esti­mat­ed 14 mil­lion immi­grants in the U.S. with­out legal sta­tus.… The sta­tus quo end­ed Sept. 18, when he was tak­en into deten­tion.”
4. The Pop­u­la­tion Bust Is Com­ing Soon­er Than Any­one Is Pre­pared For (Lyman Stone, New York Times): “If America’s pop­u­la­tion does decline, it will strain our enti­tle­ments sys­tem, dam­age the econ­o­my, reduce inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship, and cause seri­ous labor short­ages. But the major­i­ty point of view — held by major insti­tu­tions like the Cen­sus Bureau, the Unit­ed Nations and the Social Secu­ri­ty trustees — is that the Unit­ed States prob­a­bly won’t face pop­u­la­tion decline until the 2080s, or even beyond 2100. That fore­cast is far too opti­mistic. The more accu­rate pro­jec­tion, which I out­lined in a recent report for my orga­ni­za­tion, the Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies, sees the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion begin­ning to shrink in the 2050s. It is a fore­cast so grim it could upend Amer­i­can bud­get­ing and, thus, Amer­i­can pol­i­tics.”
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5. Have Young Amer­i­cans For­got­ten How to Live? (Max Hud­gins, Sub­stack): “In recent years, artists like Tyler, the Cre­ator and Kay­trana­da have called out fans for stand­ing still at their con­certs. Tyler, the Cre­ator said last sum­mer: ‘I asked some friends why they don’t dance in pub­lic and some said because of the fear of being filmed.… It made me won­der how much of our human spir­it got killed because of the fear of being a meme, all for hav­ing a good time.’ Were they, too, pris­on­ers of the panop­ti­con?”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
6. Why Do Some Demen­tia Patients ‘Return’ Just Before They Die? (Bil­ly Bren­nan, New York Times): “Mashour and sev­er­al oth­er atten­dees shared that, like Batthyany, they had wit­nessed lucid episodes first­hand. But the more the researchers dis­cussed the phe­nom­e­non, the more it con­found­ed them. Mashour likened the brain in late-stage Alzheimer’s to a pot­hole-rid­den high­way sys­tem on the verge of col­lapse, the bio­log­i­cal traf­fic of mind and mem­o­ry no longer able to flow. “If this were hap­pen­ing with actu­al high­ways,” he told me, “at no point would we say: ‘Well, you know what? Just before this high­way total­ly col­laps­es, we’re going to have a real­ly smooth ride.’ We’d say, ‘It’s just going to get worse and worse until the whole damn thing crum­bles.’”
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7. Per­ma­nent Day­light Sav­ing Time Is the Per­fect Stu­pid Idea for Our Stu­pid Time (Josh Bar­ro, Sub­stack): “Advo­cates of per­ma­nent day­light sav­ing time are often unaware that we tried this before — and that Con­gress swift­ly reversed course because Amer­i­cans were very unhap­py about the loss of sun­light in the morn­ing hours. Even when they learn this, it is rare that they update their stance. Many blind­ly dis­miss the lessons of his­to­ry; they say 1974 was a long time ago and things are dif­fer­ent now. But the main rel­e­vant dif­fer­ence between 1974 and now is that tech­nol­o­gy han­dles clock changes on our behalf, so time changes are less bur­den­some than they used to be. I bare­ly notice them, in fact. But I will notice if it’s dark out in New York City at 8 a.m. in Decem­ber, and we know from his­to­ry that vot­ers will notice too and they won’t be pleased about it.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• High school grad­u­ate in Flori­da breaks state record with 11.99 GPA, trig­ger­ing a pol­i­cy over­haul (Caitlin Hornik, AOL.com): “To achieve his 11.99 GPA, Bhaskar took 44 Advanced Place­ment and dual col­lege enroll­ment class­es. The Palm Beach Post report­ed that by the time Bhaskar received his diplo­ma, he also had enough cred­its for an associate’s degree. The sheer vol­ume of class­es was enough to bump his weight­ed aver­age up to well beyond what school offi­cials believe should be pos­si­ble.”
• A Mar­vel Flat Earth Con­ver­sa­tion — (Texts From Super­heroes)
• Amer­i­ca Final­ly Inter­est­ed In Soc­cer After Real­iz­ing How Angry You Can Make Euro­peans — (Baby­lon Bee)
• ‘Soc­cer Is Slow, Low-Scor­ing, And Bor­ing,’ Says Base­ball Fan — (Baby­lon Bee)

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.